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A Conversation with Kier-La Janisse About Horror, Women, Madness and Horror Movies.

“If watching horror films is cathartic because it provides a temporary feeling of control over the one unknown factor that can’t be controlled (death), then wouldn’t it make sense to assume a crazy person would find relief in onscreen histrionics?” So asks Kier-La Janisse in her fascinating work of self-analyzing pop cultural autobiography, House of Psychotic Women: An Autobiographical Topography of Female Neurosis in Horror and Exploitation Films.On one hand an unfailingly candid account of growing up the hard way in a dysfunctional family, the book illuminates the role horror and exploitation movies – especially those that focus on mad and deadly dangerous women – came to play in Janisse’s life as she sought both refuge and clarity in the dark and (often) forbidden world of cinematic horror. At once a fan’s tribute to an otherwise often maligned genre, a piercing and rigorous account of how horror reflects and distorts the subjective experience of female madness, and a fascinating breakdown of movies with such titles as The Legend of the Wolf Woman, Mermaid in a Manhole, Man, Woman and Beast and The Whip and the Body. What is the attraction of horror? More specifically, what does the genre hold by way of a reflection (or perversion) of the experience of growing up mad and female in today’s post-everything world? Join us for this fascinating conversation.